I am using NIS 2003 with Win/xp pro. I have a very similar problem
after applying the latest liveupdate fixes yesterday. My system
"freezes" at startup for a minute or so..then NIS starts up but for
some reason ad blocking doesnt work anymore? I used the Win/XP system
restore utility to "undo" the liveupdate garbage. Trying to find
anything on Symantecs support website is very frustrating. When you
search their knowledge base, the same articles are found over and over
again :(